Childhood Trauma

By Ursula Markham

Childhood traumas. Whether they occur by design or accident, affect a sizeable number of people, and restrict our ability to lead healthy and fulfilling lives. In this accessible and expertly written handbook, Ursula Markham takes an in-depth look at the nature of childhood trauma, showing how it can be recognized and eventually overcome.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Jan 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781911163176

Ursula Markham

Ursula Markham has many year’s experience in business training and staff counselling. She is the successful author of numerous books, including ‘How to Deal with Difficult People’.

Book preview

Introduction

Many of the people who come to see me for hypnotherapy or for counselling do so because of some trauma which occurred in their childhood. Some may have suffered actual abuse – mental, physical or emotional – while others may have felt themselves to be rejected or unloved by those responsible for bringing them up. Yet others may not realize that a trauma existed; they just think they have some present-day problem which they would like to overcome.

However, while taking people’s details, I will ask them to tell me about their early life because, even if this was a happy time for them, it will have some bearing upon the way they are now – and not necessarily a bad one. It could be that, because of a loving and secure home life, they have been far less affected by an early trauma than they would otherwise have been.

While some people remember clearly all that happened to them, good and bad, others have great difficulty in recalling anything much about their childhood – and this is usually significant in itself, making it even more important to see what we can learn about those formative years.

Whatever the original trauma and however it came about – accidentally or deliberately, with or without intended malice – the result on its young victim is the same: a total destruction of his self-esteem. (By the way, whenever I refer to ‘he’ or ‘him’, please accept it as referring to anyone – male or female. I am not being sexist but it is clumsy to keep repeating ‘him or her’, ‘his or hers’ and so on. Also, all case-study names are pseudonyms.) One of the major parts of overcoming early trauma is the rebuilding of that self-esteem.

A lot has been said in recent years about ‘false memory syndrome’ so it is very important to allow the thoughts and memories to come as they will – without any prompting or suggestion on the therapist’s part. There are techniques for enabling this to happen and I will tell you about them in this book.

Although there is a school of thought which believes that, in order to overcome a condition caused by an incident in the past, it is necessary to relive the initial trauma with its accompanying pain or distress, I promise you that this is not so. In the 15 or so years I have been practising hypnotherapy I have helped hundreds of people to rid themselves of present-day conditions without ever having to re-experience the initial distress which led to them.

In this book I hope to show you how you can achieve all this for yourself. You can learn to discover the initial cause of your current problems and to free yourself from its effects, allowing yourself to go on to live a more positive and fulfilling life.

CHAPTER 1

Products of the Past

Imagine looking through the window of a maternity ward and seeing 20 tiny new-born babies. Assuming that all are healthy, there is very little to tell between them (unless you happen to be the parent). Some may be black and some white; some may be dark and some fair; some may have hair and some may not. But, beyond their need for food, warmth and love, they do not have any problems.

Now imagine that you could meet all those babies 30 years later. How different they would be then. Some would be content while others would be depressed. Some would be confident and positive, others timid and introverted. Some would be involved in good, strong relationships while others would have drifted from one disastrous liaison to another.

Why is this? What has happened to all those little babies to make them grow up so differently? It can’t all be a result of their genes. Something – or, indeed, many things – happened to them along the way to make them into the sorts of adults they have become.

What has happened is that they have all been through different sets of life experiences during their early years and those experiences have each left a mark – positive or negative – upon them and upon the way they feel about themselves.

In the chapters that follow we are going to look at what happens during childhood to see how it has affected you as an adult. We’re also going to look at the different ways of eliminating any problems your childhood might have caused you and ensuring that it can no longer have any negative effect upon your life. But the first essential is to see how what happens to you as a child has a deep and long-lasting effect upon your future life.

For the purposes of this book, I am going to take ‘childhood’ as meaning up to about 11 or 12 years of age. Of course there are things which happen to young people over 12 which can cause problems later in life but these tend to be different problems bringing with them different reactions.

A young child under the age of 12 or so is very vulnerable to the words and deeds of other people and to events which occur and situations which exist around them. They have very little choice in what happens in their lives and are dependent upon others for their well-being.

Don’t think, by the way, that everything you are going to read about has arisen because the child concerned had the misfortune to be born to evil or unthinking parents. Even those parents who love their children dearly and have their best interests at heart may not always act in the most appropriate way. I know! I have two adult sons and, had I known when they were small what I know now, there are many things I would have done differently.

Sometimes the initial trauma is not caused by people at all but by events which are beyond anyone’s control.

I was born during the Second World War – a time when many children suffered traumas of different kinds. Because of my father’s poor eyesight he had to work in a factory rather than go off to fight, so I was lucky because he came home every night. But many of my contemporaries were three or four years old before they even met their fathers. Now that was no one’s fault. The men concerned had little choice in the matter – they went where they were sent.

Some fathers never returned at all or came home severely disabled and this too would have an effect upon the child. And those who did return were like strangers to the infant they had left behind.

Valerie told me of her father’s homecoming. She was three years old and had never seen her father before as he had been sent overseas a month before she was born. Suddenly, one day, the door opened and there stood what was, to the little girl, an enormous man in dark clothes – a stranger. Not only had Valerie not seen her father, she had seen very few men in her short life as, apart from those who were elderly or infirm, most of them had gone to fight for their country.

So now, not only was there this huge man filling the doorway, but he rushed over to the child, picked her up and held her close to his face, hugging her tightly. (Of course he did; this was a young man overjoyed to be returning home and delighted to see the little girl he loved but had never met.)

Imagine it from Valerie’s point of view. To be swung off her feet by this large man with his strange-feeling clothes and big, strong hands and then held against a face which was rough and hard compared to those of the mother and grandmother with whom she had spent her life until that moment. How was she to know that when he held her tightly against him it was because he was full of love for his little daughter? Was it any wonder that she burst into tears and screamed for her mother?

I met Valerie when she was over 40 but the memory of that day was etched so clearly in her mind that she was able to describe it to me in great detail.

As time went by, father and daughter got to know each other and the relationship became loving and caring. But Valerie never forgot what was to her the terrifying moment of their first encounter.

You might think that the good years which followed would nullify the frightening effect of that first meeting in Valerie’s mind. But it doesn’t quite work like that. Logically Valerie understood the situation perfectly but the fear she had felt at three years old had left its mark on her subconscious mind.

The image we have of ourselves is formed at a very young age. Such experiences can shape our lives and will determine whether we grow up to have high or low self-esteem. Low self-esteem will make it impossible to be truly content with our lives or ourselves. And, whatever the level of that self-esteem, we will live our lives in such a way that we reinforce it – unless, of course, we go on to do something to change it (as you are doing now by reading this book).

A very young child will see parents (or anyone who may be acting in that position) as all-knowing and all-powerful people who are never wrong. If for any reason one or both of those parents appear to reject him, the child will assume it is his fault. After all, these wonderful people must be right, mustn’t they?

‘Rejection’, as far as the child is concerned, can take many forms. If the parent appears not to love the child, he feels rejected. If the parent goes away, unless others are very careful to explain the situation to him in terms he can understand, the child will still take it as personal rejection.

Any counsellor who works with the children of divorced or separated parents will tell you that in an enormous number of cases the child truly believes that he is to blame for the parting. This applies particularly in those cases where there have been arguments over custody.

You would think that any child who knew that both parents wanted him to live with them would feel doubly loved. But consider what usually happens in the run-up to a separation; the child will be only too aware of a hostile atmosphere – whether he has been given the reason for this or not. In addition, he will realize that his name is being mentioned a great deal but that conversations have a habit of being cut short whenever he comes into the room. No wonder he is confused and often feels that he has done something terribly wrong.

But it is not only in cases of deliberate action that rejection can be perceived by the child. We all know that some people die or are taken ill and have to spend time in hospital; others may go to prison or have some other reason for disappearing from the child’s scene. In many instances the very young child will take this as rejection too – particularly if no one has taken the trouble to tell him the truth about what is happening. His subconscious mind will say to him ‘This wonderful person who knows everything and who should love me has gone away and left me. Therefore they do not love me and, since they are so wise, I must be unlovable.’

It is so important at such times in a